[OLPC-Philippines] ZDNet Asia: Open source adoption 'anomaly' in Philippines

[Mel Chua]

Interesting - not particularly actionable, but here are some things I 
think it could mean for eKindling other OSS-in-education projects in the 
Philippines:

1. If the private sector is indeed ahead of the education sector in OSS 
usage, this represents a potentially *great* situation in terms of 
corporate sponsorship of small deployments (single-school, say - as 
opposed to "200,000 children in this region"). Let companies turn their 
usage of OSS into a "social good" by "sharing" the OSS-way with local kids.

2. If penetration is indeed 45% (someone may want to look more deeply 
into those statistics), getting student volunteers for projects may 
benefit from the "it's useful vocational training - look at the 
percentage of jobs out there using OSS!" angle.

How's eKindling doing these days? I don't see a lot of discussion on the 
mailing lists, which makes me curious whether there's another place I 
should be listening in.

--Mel

-----

A CIO survey conducted by Springboard Research, determined that the 
country has an OSS penetration rate of 45 percent, higher than the 
overall Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, penetration rate of 40 percent. 
The Asean OSS adoption rate stood at 34 percent.

...

The Philippine market also stood out for an "interesting anomaly", noted 
Lauro Vives, chief analyst at XMG.

"While we generally see the early adopters of OSS to be in the public 
and education sectors, the Philippine private sector seem to be ahead of 
these two sectors in its adoption of open source," Canada-based Vives, 
said in an e-mail.

...

However, he added that vibrant OSS adoption could, in fact, 
stimulate--rather than adversely affect--the local software economy.

To help extend the technology's reach, XMG suggested that OSS players 
should follow in Microsoft's footsteps and deploy a rich user experience 
to drive adoption.